Browse by Label: DEXTER'S CIGAR

Artist:	CIRCLE X
Title:
Label:	DEXTER'S CIGAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	DEX 003CD

1996 release, somehow available again. Dexter's Cigar is the now defunct Drag City subsidiary reissue label run by Jim O'Rourke (unofficially, the first 2 releases were the Mayo Thompson and Red Krayola reissues; the label now has separate catalog numbers and design motifs from Drag City proper). Most releases on this label are now out of print or soon-to-be. Reissue of the debut 12" EP by this group, originally from Louisville before migrating to NYC. A "seminal no wave classic"; in the words of Jordan N. Mamone: "brutal outbursts of feedback-and-blare emitted by the late Bruce Wisiepe remain perhaps the most underrated and unknown influences in underground rock."

Artist:	MERZBOW
Title:	Rainbow Electronics 2
Label:	DEXTER'S CIGAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.00
Catalog #:	DEX 006CD

1996 release on Jim O'Rourke's old label, surprisingly repressed for 2008. First non-reissue on this label -- an unreleased companion to the 1990 Alchemy label masterpiece. "The designation 'Rainbow' contrasts with the odd colorlessness of the many noise records. Like Voice Crack, this is power electronics at its most detailed, most subtly varied, and most exhaustively kinetic. It doesn't stop. It's a thrill every two seconds, for seventy-five minutes... It splits into halves, quarters, and more unwieldy f(r)actions. It splits prime numbers... it's the closest we've found to an infinite palette."

Artist:	ART & LANGUAGE AND THE RED CRAYOLA
Title:	Corrected Slogans
Label:	DEXTER'S CIGAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$12.00
Catalog #:	DEX 009CD

"Originally released in 1976, Corrected Slogans presents the first audible stirrings of Red Crayola since their 1968 God Bless the Red Crayola and All Who Sail With It. In the intervening years, Mayo Thompson made what has been hailed as the finest album in the history of rock music (Corky's Debt To His Father), moved from Texas to NY, and began to collaborate with the group of artists known collectively as Art & Language. As a provisional propaganda piece, Corrected Slogans is rancorously, unabashedly, and gloriously wordy. It's work-driven quality most closely recalls Kangaroo? (the next Crayola collaboration with Art & Language). While Kangaroo? was a pop album, Corrected Slogans takes a sparse acoustic setting, allowing the many voices of the Art & Language troop to represent a socialist-style collective voice of the common man."

Artist:	RABE, FOLKE
Title:	What??
Label:	DEXTER'S CIGAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	DEX 012CD

Restocked. Fantastic reissue of obscure Swedish sine-wave drone/electronics; so desirable of a release that I'm almost willing to forgive Grubbs & O'Rourke for those assaholic Squirrel Bait atrocities! Includes a previously unreleased half-speed version for 76 full minutes of sound, a harmonically pure minimalist classic of subtle shiftage and its infinite possibilities. "First issued in 1970 by the German label Wergo, What?? (as we would call it here in America) was obscure even among the avant company it kept in; labelmates such as Stockhausen, Ligeti and Cage overshadowed Rabe from the start." Rabe: "About 85% of the material is made up of electronically generated tones, which however are never present in their static, original form. Each partial has been specifically treated in itself, which can at times yield a very rich result. What?? was created in the late summer of 1967, and was realized by me in the electronic studio of the Swedish Radio...the second What?? is the same as the first, but at half-speed, ie. one octave lower. This may seem a lousy way to fill up a CD, but in fact through the years I have been using both versions in performances. With the kind of sound material used in What??, it does not simply sound half-speed. In a way it becomes another piece of music -- mellower, and the single events of course easier to distinguish." Limited remaining stock.

Artist:	TORAL, RAFAEL
Title:	Wave Field
Label:	DEXTER'S CIGAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	DEX 014CD

Reissue of the 2nd album by this Portuguese guitarist/composer, originally issued by the small Moneyland label 1995, which was not widely distributed. "This record is what every guitar/drone/crunch/snap,crack and pop afficionado has ever wanted. It's epic, it's intimate, it's a personally served 10 course meal at a table for two at the edge of the Grand Canyon." Dedicated to Alvin Lucier, with instructions to be played "very soft or very loud," this features Toral's trademark sound (lush, interstellar ambiance -- not immediately identifiable as guitar-derived) at its finest. Purely radiant and suitable for the ultimate immersion, this is an artifact of sonic genius. "The wave field is located somewhere inn far away region of the ambient territory, close to the frontier with a swampy area where abstract vibrations from liquid rock are solved under noise-charged clouds echoing some electrical irradiation. 'Wave Field 5' and '6' were recorded to hard disk from the vibrating body of a Fender Jaguar wired through a Morley wah, Korg guitar synth (no synth, filters only), Dod graphic EQ, Alesis reverb and compressor, Ashly Parametric EQ and Sansamp." -- Toral.

Artist:	DREYBLATT, ARNOLD
Title:	Nodal Excitation
Label:	DEXTER'S CIGAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	DEX 015CD

Reissue of a key minimalist masterwork. Dreyblatt's documentation in the past has been slim, with albums on Hat Art, Tzadik and Table of the Elements. This album features a 39 minute performance by Arnold's group known as The Orchestra of Excited Strings, recorded in 1981/82 Dreyblatt, Michael Hauenstein (bass violas with Excited Strings), Peter Phillips (Midget Upright Pianoforte), Kraig Hill (Portable Pipe Organ) & Greg Lewis (Hurdy Gurdy). "Dreyblatt only had one record Nodal Excitation (on the mostly post-AACM jazz label India Navigation), before he packed and moved to Berlin, were he concentrated on other activities, making only 2 more records over the next 10 years. But for those who caught the action, Arnold was the man. He was more rock than any of the other minimalists combined, and he was also the only one to really tap into that massive proto-minimal sound that Conrad had squelched out of his tin-contact mic violin in the early 60s. Indeed, in the early 70s, after being in school in Buffalo, where Conrad taught, Dreyblatt moved into Manhattan to work for LaMonte Young, where he witnessed first hand, and listened first-ear to those legendary recordings of the Theatre of Eternal Music. He got interest in long string sounds, and bought a bass that he wired with piano wire. By hitting the strings instead of bowing them, Dreyblatt was able to get those ringing overtones, but he also had added something new: pure rhythm...So what you have here is Dreyblatt's freshman record, a slice of minimal history that is as potent now, if not more, as it was then. It was a lighthouse that was aiming the wrong way when the tugboat came by, but now it's shining right in your face."

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Artist:	GASTR DEL SOL
Title:	The Serpentine Similar
Label:	DEXTER'S CIGAR
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	DEX 013CD